I seem to keep on returning to the notion of integrity. I don’t know why it doesn’t feature in public discussion of Ireland’s growing list of scandals, so many of which were caused by failure to speak up and do what was clearly the right thing.

The usual excuse for hiding in a crowd which is doing wrong or behaving stupidly is fear. That is understandable and a reason to forgive lack of integrity – until the nature of the fear is examined. If integrity might lead to death or injury or even losing one’s job, then let’s be forgiving. However, if the fear is no more than a vague feeling that one might lose out on a promotion or worse a fear of being excluded from a group of chancers or fools, then no! In such circumstances a lack of integrity is completely unacceptable and a person so lacking – especially one who has demonstrated the flaw – cannot have or continue to hold a position of responsibility. Does that seem harsh? It is and it needs to be because in Ireland at least we’ve been far too tolerant of the cowardly sleveens whose overriding virtue is to fit in and get along with people.

Here’s Fintan O’Toole laying the blame on an excess of loyalty and suggesting that showing integrity involved paying a high price: “We’ve seen this time and again: in the crushing of the internal auditors who warned that our major banks were up to their white-collared necks in skulduggery; in the systematic protection of child abusers by the Catholic Church; in the extreme reluctance of many health professionals to shout stop when they saw dangerous and even deadly practices; in the parade of politicians coming out to assure us that Charles Haughey was a patriot to his fingertips who would no sooner take a bribe than he would kiss a Brit; in the vicious shouting-down of those who suggested that the property boom might be a bubble.” *

“Crushing”? “Vicious shouting down”? This is silly exaggeration. If a person cannot speak up in the face of a shouting or overbearing fool, he/she is either too timid or too lacking in integrity to continue. Moreover, the position of the timid would be improved if proven lack of integrity were not tolerated and indeed punished when found out.

Ireland is about to appoint a new Garda (police) Commissioner and the talk is of the need to recruit outside the force or outside the country. This is evasive rubbish, prompting a straight response: If there is no one in Garda management with sufficient expertise, experience and integrity to be promoted, then they should not be in Garda management.

In the same article Fintan raises “a squalid event” in Waterford: Garda assault and the perversion of justice when a surveillance camera was turned away. Gardaí went to jail but Fintan also mentions the decent Gardaí who gave evidence of wrongdoing and implies that some did not. The latter should be gone by now because they have shown themselves to be the wrong stuff.**

Similar can and should be said of the quiet failures in so many institutions and professions whom Fintan (above) is prepared to whitewash in the lime of “culture” and exaggerated fear or ignore in a zealous attempt to get a handful of senior sacrificial victims.

John Fallon reported in the Irish Times today that David Duffy, the CEO of Allied Irish Banks, intends a clean-up within the bank.* However, what is reported is that David Duffy has joined Fianna Fáil and Sinn Fein in asking citizens yet again to go WAWA (“We are where we are”). Yes, here we go again. What he proposes is that past wrongdoing be attributed to “culture” and that the bank makes a fresh start without getting rid of wrongdoers.

The wrongdoing in question is managers borrowing from their own bank to become developers or investors. David Duffy is clearly of the view that this is not just a bad practice but unethical and lacking in integrity. He is resolute that it will never happen again and that if it does, the manager will be dismissed.

The problem of course is that it can’t be wrong today but not wrong yesterday. That’s where the old reliable WAWA escape clause comes in and it’s all too familiar: “No one is guilty; it was the culture”. It’s a constant refrain in Ireland today. It is offered as an excuse for all sorts of failure and for crimes: failure to speak up while the economy was ruined, child abuse, political murders, laundry slavery and now dodgy borrowing by bank managers has been added to the list.

It is simply not credible that the chancers who were involved in these loans will now suddenly become people of integrity fit to be managers in an important institution. It is not acceptable that the CEO of this institution is prepared to go WAWA and to leave those not fit for office in place.
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* http://m.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2013/0223/1224330416276.html?via=bnews

Very many criminals and other wrongdoers are victims. Many have had a dreadful childhood or have committed crimes while in fear of someone. It is right to be sympathetic but it is wrong to excuse them completely. We have developed ways of dealing with different levels of responsibility; lesser charges can be laid or lenient – perhaps suspended – sentences can be applied. It is, however, wrong to ignore completely crimes committed under duress or being an accessory to crime while under duress. This is because duress is variable and requires judgement. It is expected that a person with integrity will stand up to duress and do the right thing but it is also accepted that duress may be so extreme that no one could be expected to resist. Each case calls for judgement.

The case of a mother who was silent or who facilitated the rape of her child must be examined and judged.

The following appeared in the Irish Times in relation to the conviction of Fiona Doyle’s father for rape. “The problem most people have when stories like Fiona’s come out is that everyone wants to know about the mother – why she didn’t intervene – and it takes the focus off the father and the abuser,” says Paula. “But, in most cases, the mothers are as much the victims.” (i)

Certainly nothing should happen to divert attention from or dilute the guilt of the rapist but to say that “in most cases” the mothers of child victims of rape are “as much the victims” diverts attention from the seriousness of rape and undermines the child’s particular and terrible grievance.

Another Irish Times piece on the same page argues that it would be very wrong to blame the mothers in such situations. (ii) That might appear progressive and decent at first sight but it suggests that all are blameless.

It is worthwhile to consider a further wrong committed against Fiona Doyle in which duress might be the defence.

The following is from another piece in The Irish Times. “Rape survivor Fiona Doyle has said no alarm bells rang when as a child she was treated for a sexually transmitted infection. ‘I was brought to the doctor . . . and the doctor told my mother I had warts and they were that bad that I had to go to hospital to have them lasered off. But I didn’t know until I was in my late twenties that I had an STI,’ she told last night’s Late Late Show.” (iii)

The doctor and those at the hospital who remained silent having treated a child for an illness that was sexually transmitted, bear some responsibility for subsequent rape attacks on the child. The duress which motivated their silence would be of a different type and a much, much smaller degree than that faced by the mother but the medical staff, like the mother, have questions to answer.

There is no comparison between public service and private enrichment. Let us stop making one so as to attract “the right stuff” into public service.

“There may come a time some day when the country will have to face the question of paying the great heads of the Civil Service on a commercial basis. There is a constant temptation, and it is only those who, like the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Austen Chamberlain), myself and others who have had some experience, know what the temptation is. Great commercial undertakings are constantly trying to lure away our great Civil Servants by offers not of the same salary, not of twice, but of five or ten times the amount that they are receiving as Civil Servants. Some of them, for family and other reasons, succumb to the temptation, but most of them resist it. But there is an element of honour in the public service which will always be some sort of contribution and make towards the retention of these great public servants. When we offer £400 a year as payment of Members of Parliament it is not a recognition of the magnitude of the service, it is not a remuneration, it is not a recompense, it is not even a salary. It is just an allowance, and I think the minimum allowance, to enable men to come here, men who would render incalculable service to the State, and whom it is an incalculable loss to the State not to have here, but who cannot be here because their means do not allow it. It is purely an allowance to enable us to open the door to great and honourable public service to these men, for whom this country will be all the richer, all the greater and all the stronger for the un-known-vicissitudes which it has to face by having here to aid us by their counsel, by their courage, and by their resource.” –

The UK CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER (David Lloyd George) moving his Payment of Members motion, HC Deb 10 August 1911 vol 29 cc1365-4831365

I should explain at the outset that this post is very different to those that usually appear on my blog. I’m writing here about dogs, specifically retrievers. You see, I’ve been a fan of the Flatcoated Retriever (Here) for a very long time. After years away from gundogs, I acquired Stevie, aka Hallatonoak Robur, in 2009. He almost immediately rekindled my interest in working and training. I’ve been having fun with great people – in the fresh air and in beautiful locations.

As is my wont, I’ve also been thinking about these wonderful working dogs and what the 19th century people who bred selectively in order to create them were up to. My starting point is admiration for the appearance, working ability and character/temperament of primarily the Flatcoat but also the other breeds with which I’ve trained: Labradors (Here), Chesapeakes(Here), Goldens (Here) and Irish Water Spaniels (Here). [Plus an Italian Spinone (Here) years ago and a Portuguese Water Dog (Here) recently. While the former couldn’t be persuaded to retrieve, the later did retrieve but as far as I know it’s not a retriever but a water dog being put to work as a retriever and that just may echo the origins of all the retriever breeds.]

There is a long running debate in retriever circles about dogs bred for shows and dogs bred for working. This division tends to be polarised around rival archetypes which, as far as I can make out, are much worse in the imaginings of the debaters than the really existing dogs favoured by their respective camps The fear is the emergence of sub-breeds within each breed, type a) being the big beautiful show dog who no longer has any working ability, and type b) being the working dog who bears only a passing resemblance to what the breed is expected to look like.

What tends to happen is that people gravitate towards either the working or the show camp. Those interested in working – primarily those who participate in field trials (There’s a hyperlink to trials below.) can be dismissive of show dogs and their breeding. Triallers often say that they don’t care what a dog looks like as long as it can do its job. I’ve learned to take this view with a pinch of salt as there’s no evidence that anyone wants to allow cross-breeds to work and compete. Moreover, for people who don’t care about appearance, triallers spend a lot of time talking about “style” in a working dog.

Those interested in showing (Here) are almost never dismissive of working dogs. On the contrary they tend to express admiration. However, for a variety of reasons they prefer not to work their dogs.

Kennel club rules for showing and for working competitions (tests and trials) provide strong motivation for the division in that working dogs can accumulate a lot of winning rosettes before having their appearance scrutinised, while it was decided relatively recently that show dogs are allowed to become “champions” without showing any ability to work as a retriever.

The obvious response is to let them at it as long as everyone is having fun and the dogs are well treated.

There is, however, a third camp and it’s the one with which I identify. Here the view is – crudely -something like this: If it doesn’t look like a retriever AND it doesn’t work like a retriever, it isn’t a retriever. This is the view that each and every animal’s appearance should not be out of place in a show ring and that each one should be able and willing to work.

There are a couple of approaches within this dual-purpose camp. There are those who admire and want to maintain the beautiful animals with their working ability and some of these people both show their dogs and work their dogs in competition with animals bred specifically for either working or showing. Another approach is to link the gundog character/temperament to its working genes. Everyone, the argument goes, likes gundogs because they are cheerful and friendly. For this reason they are favourites as family pets. The claim is that they are like this because they’ve been bred so; the friendly outgoing character is essential to working with other dogs and humans. The fear is that if retrievers are bred for appearance alone without regard to working, the familiar temperament will decline. In short the pet owner might say something very like the third-camp position. The pet owner would probably reckon that if it doesn’t look like a retriever and hasn’t a retriever’s temperament, it isn’t a retriever.

Among those interested in working retrievers, the ambition is to make-up a field trial champion. This is achieved by winning field trials. These are competitions in which dogs are sent to retrieve freshly shot game which has been left lying to facilitate the trial. (Here) It’s a demanding standard and judges make it so. The handlers direct their dogs – often at a considerable distance – by whistles and hand signals. A successful retrieve is when the dog picks the game and returns it to hand.

The rationale is that field trials identify the very best working dogs which can then be used for breeding.

At this point I’d expect that some readers with no knowledge of gundogs will have spotted the problem. It’s this: field trials identify the dogs that are best at field trials. The question turns to the degree to which the trials are a good or an adequate test of working ability. Moreover, the nature of the work, as will emerge below, can be questioned.

Now a very tetchy debate opens up. Triallers argue that a trial IS a typical day out shooting and that the winning dog is clearly the best working dog. Others who don’t attend trials but who work their dogs picking-up (retrieving) at a driven shoot (Here) or rough shooting argue that the trialling dog is too controlled or even poorly built to impress at a day’s shooting. Essentially they are saying that a trial and a day’s shooting are very different. My view on this particular debate is that the two activities are indeed very different. However, I’ve seen no evidence that a trialling dog is anything less than very good when working at a shoot. My view in other words is that while a trial doesn’t bear a very close resemblance to a shooting day, trialling dogs are at least competent and often wonderful dogs to have at a shoot. Incidentally, the same goes for the summer working tests (here) when retrievers fetch dummies because the game season is closed; the same trialling dogs tend to win. Oddly enough, despite the identical correlation, I’ve never heard it argued that working tests on dummies can identify the best dogs.

Recently I was out “shooing” wayward pheasants back towards their pens (Here) with Mary Murray of Riverrun Chesapeakes (Her blog is here) and we did a lot of talking. (That woman is a mine of information.) What was on my mind was the making of the retriever breeds and what they were for. Because of my recent contact with Chesapeakes, I came to see what I’d read about: they are much less, let’s say, demonstrative than Flatcoats. Now, it has seemed clear to me for some time that a gundog’s character/temperament is created along with its working ability, e.g. you can’t have a dog among other dogs and among humans unless it is reasonably sociable.

However, the Chesapeake was required to do something very unlike that asked of the other retrievers: he/she was required to guard the wildfowler’s boat when it was left unattended. This “guarding” seems very much a characteristic of the breed and clearly if it is ignored or bred out, the breed will be changed. (No,no,no, I’m not saying that the Chesapeake is aggressive and needs to be treated with caution. That’s not my limited experience of hanging out with them. “Aggression” involves going forward; “Guarding” involves staying put.)

It struck me that if one were interested in maintaining the Chesapeake away from its Bay (Here) and commercial wildfowling, one would have to devise tests/trials that reflect what the dog was created to do. However, these days most – though not all – tests/trials are derived from the driven shoot. While of course the Chesapeake can compete in these, they very likely do not constitute an adequate or completely relevant test.

If I had written that last sentence a week ago, it would have appeared thus: While of course the Chesapeake can compete in these, they very likely do not constitute an adequate or completely relevant test and they equally likely confer a distinct advantage on the retriever breeds created for driven shoots. What has changed, what has upset my line of thinking?

It’s this: the driven pheasant shoot, the battue, (Here) seems to have arrived in England after 1860. (Here) Now, if one allows a couple of decades for the practice to become widespread, an odd thought begins to form: most or possibly all of the retriever breeds were established before the driven pheasant shoot became commonplace. It may be the standard workplace for a retriever today but it doesn’t seem possible that it is what they were bred to do. Sure, they’ve adapted to it and they are working well but it may not be what is required to keep the essentials and particularly the essential differences of the breeds.

Two thoughts emerge. If all retriever work were the same, there would not be the number of different breeds – especially on one island, Britain. Secondly, so very, very much of the breeding goes back to water dogs but water tends to be scarce at the battue. (I’m becoming overly fond of that bit of French!) Mind you, many of the best Labradors in Ireland spend a great deal of their time in lakes and bogs. My friend, Stevie the Flatcoat, is from the English midlands but he has taken to bogs and water like it answers some old calling.

This leads towards a conclusion that would be quite upsetting for many of those who work their retrievers. It would seem that the work they do today and the competition exercises which are based on them may be failing to test the breeds for the purposes for which they were intended. Certainly there are driven shoots – lots of them – where the birds come down in rough and inaccessible places but against that I’ve been asked in a field trial to send my dog for a bird that I’d normally walk out a pick up myself (I should add that I was always grateful to a judge for a handy retrieve!) and in working tests ludicrously easy retrieves over ground not far from lawn quality are often used to separate dogs on equal scores. These dogs were bred to find game on ground that requires exceptional scenting ability, on ground that is not easily accessible to humans, from boggy ground and water, and to work relatively independently, knowing the job better than their handler.

It may not be important that today’s dogs be brought back to face work of this kind but I just can’t see these wonderful breeds remaining relatively unchanged if this does not happen. I think it would be worth the effort to change today’s rules to ensure that it does happen.

Before Ireland began the property scam the lending policy of building societies protected both the borrower and the building society from folly.

Some time ago I wrote here (https://colummccaffery.wordpress.com/2010/06/11/house-prices-available-mortgages/) about the “traditional” mathematical formula used by building societies to link the size of a loan to the borrower’s ability to pay. This formula [(Annual salary A X2.5) + Annual salary B = 75% of the value of the house.] was used in my piece to calculate the sensible price of housing as opposed to the market value of housing. The latter is determined by whatever the purchaser is prepared to pay and was grossly inflated when banks and building societies abandoned the socially responsible and commercially viable formula and made crazy loans available.

This brings me to the point of this piece. The conventional formula could now be used to differentiate between sensible businesslike lending and foolish behaviour.

When a foolish loan was agreed, there were of course two parties to the foolishness: the lender and the borrower. It is certainly true that borrowers behaved foolishly. They too could see that repayments – even if everything remained fine for them on the income front – were incompatible with comfortable living. They were, however, driven to excess by fear of rising prices and constant media and family advice to “get on the property ladder” at all costs. In short, they are responsible for their actions and they will pay for their foolishness for a very long time.

The lender is responsible too. The lender is responsible for knowingly and foolishly lending more than could be repaid while living reasonably well. The lender tempted and lured the foolish borrower.

Look at it this way. Reasonable living dictates that mortgage repayments do not constitute a crippling outflow of money each week or month. If a building society or bank lured a borrower to the extent that he/she abandoned common sense and borrowed far too much, the lender should be penalised by the amount of the excess. The excess can be calculated by reference to the pre-madness policy, i.e. by using the “traditional” formula.

Let’s turn to the question of money. Let’s consider a well off couple both with good jobs seeking a mortgage at the height of the scam: One has an income of, say, €40k p.a. and the other has an income of, say, €30k p.a. Let’s refer to the first as A and the second as B. Now remember that traditional formula: (Annual salary A X2.5) + Annual salary B = 75% of the value of the house.

Right let’s apply figures: (40k X 2.5) + 30 = 130k

What this indicates is that at the time the loan was agreed, any bank or building society which lent in excess of €130k to a couple with a combined income of €70k p.a. was behaving foolishly and could not possibly have expected the loan to be repaid. That they were aware of what they were doing is evidenced by the existence of the earlier prudent lending policy expressed in the “traditional” formula.

If we are talking about debt forgiveness or write-downs of mortgages, a sensible approach would be to go back to the loan application, look at the stated income/s and calculate the maximum loan that a sane, commercially minded lender would have advanced. It is now a matter of striking the value of the mortgage debt down to this figure. It could then be increased by, say, 10% in order to penalise the stupidity of the borrower.

None of this takes account of how the lenders will cope with the reduced value of the loans on their books. This, however, is true of any measure of debt reduction. What the proposal here does do is root a system of debt forgiveness/reduction in a clear and previously existing policy which worked for years and whose purpose was to protect the lender and the borrower from greedy madness.

Think about the following. It’s from Noel Whelan’s piece in the Irish Times of Saturday, May 12th. He’s referring to the BAI report re Primetime Investigates but the added emphasis is mine.

“Among the report’s most important revelations is that, contrary to some media reports, the key decision to proceed with the broadcast was not made on the hoof. A formal, although undocumented, meeting took place the previous Friday, including the producer and reporter of the programme, the executive producer of Prime Time Investigates, the editor of RTÉ current affairs and the director of RTÉ news, together with legal department representatives.

There was unanimous agreement to proceed among production and editorial staff despite awareness of Fr. Reynolds’s willingness to take a paternity test. They were convinced their story was accurate, and made a series of ‘highly subjective assumptions, which served to reinforce their certainty’”. (http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2012/0512/1224315982387.html )

Look again at the half dozen or so words to which I added emphasis: “A formal, although undocumented, meeting took place” . The words sit there attracting not even their author’s comment, their significance lost. Those present at that meeting have many fine qualities, are high achievers and are people of ability but that they sat through a formal meeting without seeing the need to have a record of what transpired is alarming. Now, a meeting might have been called at which it was made clear that it was “unofficial”, that it was “just a chat among colleagues” and which didn’t seriously address the issue. This would attract a range of other criticism but it wouldn’t be quite so (Here comes the word again!) stupid or signal a complete absence of routine management.

The innocence of those present is as telling as the lack of subsequent comment. It suggests that slipshod practice is commonplace. Now that’s a depressing thought with implications beyond restoring trust in journalism.

The Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) has found that an RTE * programme in the series Prime Time Investigates, “Mission to Prey”, was not fair in that it broadcast serious, damaging and untrue allegations about Fr. Kevin Reynolds.** The reality is more serious. A good man was cruelly injured. He was trampled in a bovine lust for a story.

Once the truth emerged, the response of the media industry generally – in failing to call a spade a spade – has been ridiculous. Leaving aside management structures, guidelines, “group think”, standards in journalism, “best practice”, legal advice etc., something quite brutal needs to be said: On the verge of publishing an allegation of paternity, it requires an enormous level of stupidity to refuse to defer publication when the man concerned is offering to take a paternity test. While there can be many determinants of stupidity, the word still needs to be said without professional prevarication.

Incidentally, we all do stupid things from time to time. We learn from them. The costs of stupidity can be viewed as an investment in the avoidance of similar mistakes. It is therefore silly to get rid of an employee whose stupid error has cost the organisation a great deal. Look at it this way: It can be said with enormous confidence that such a person will be very careful in future. Their replacement comes with no such guarantee and the person in whom so much has been “invested” goes off to work – carefully – for someone else. In short, the stupidity has been compounded for the sake of creating a tough image.

Publication of the BAI report prompted the familiar balm: comments by industry worthies processed in ritual seriousness. However, the BAI investigation and report turns out to be a veritable rescue package for standards of operation that any thinking person would regard as ordinary – indeed, as minimal. Absence of records and notes, and failure to perform checks do not constitute a problem specific to journalism; this would be maladministration in any industry or organisation. It is a description of inefficient, wasteful chaos.

It is impossible to believe that such chaos existed in one isolated area and that word of its existence never reached the outside world. It is more likely that it was learned and accepted in RTE, in the media industry and very probably in industry generally.

A long time before “managerialism”, management was in trouble. It was fluttering from fad to fad, guided by well-meaning people who thought they had found a career in promoting some fundamental truth. Routine, well-tested, ordinary – even boring – management was interrupted by or abandoned in favour of a series of fashions. Let’s put it this way: The study of management in order to make it better is desirable and necessary but like life in general, there is no blinding liberating truth and proposals for change have to be plausible. Moreover and much more importantly, there are basics which if removed, draw the enterprise into inflicting and incurring damage. The chaos that was Prime Time and which the BAI reveals is all too familiar: The triumph of a slipshod, bogus iconoclasm over planning, minutes, research, questioning etc. – all very likely dismissed as “bureaucracy”.

* I worked in RTE for more than three happy decades. I seldom criticise the organisation now for a few reasons. Firstly, there are fond ties of loyalty. Secondly, if tempted, it would be wrong to use insider information in argument. Thirdly, while RTE is subject to all of the fads which pass through industry generally and while RTE journalists are too like journalists generally, it remains an exceptionally good organisation which deserves to be spared overly harsh criticism.

It’s difficult to imagine that anyone gets through life without occasionally having their integrity tested. (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/integrity/) There are rare situations where showing integrity might bring appalling consequences – even death – and in such a situation fear unto dishonesty is understandable and forgivable. In most other situations the risk is small. Indeed the most common motivation for failing to act or speak with integrity is an ambition for career advancement. Now, let’s be quite clear here. If someone feels compelled to dishonesty for fear of being sacked, then that may be forgivable if the matter is relatively minor. However, a person who abandons their integrity for the hope of career advancement reveals a paradox: They progress by being precisely the kind of person who is unsuited to a position of trust or of any importance.

It is true too that in our times a calculating, professional, strategic way of thinking tends to be lauded and this provides a ready cover for acting without reference to good or bad.

Today there are calls for the resignation of Cardinal Seán Brady who acted in a professional manner rather than doing what was right. (http://www.herald.ie/news/i-didnt-realise-impact-of-child-abuse-brady-3097772.htmlhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01h7m8r) As a mature man of 35 years, well into his career, his integrity was tested. He failed the test and is proven to be “the wrong stuff”, i.e. a person lacking in integrity and unsuited to a position of responsibility. The consequences of his failure were dire for a number of abused children. The risk to him of acting with integrity was slight. His life, his family, his livelihood were not on the line. All that was at risk for doing the right thing was a petty hope of promotion.

There are ordinary people who pass such tests. They are rarely dealing with matters so serious. They do however speak up and/or act according to what is right – either morally or for the good of the organisation that employs them. In the short term they accept that they will anger the boss and their career will stall. In the long-term they may never recover that impetus for promotion or they may come to be seen as having integrity, precisely what is required in a more senior position.

I shouldn’t have to preface my remarks here but I reckon that I do. I do not support the Rossport protesters and I’m far from impressed by the victims in this case. With that out of the way, let’s get down to the importance of what happened in that car and the inadequacy of the official response.*

I’m reminded of a case many years ago when a man was murdered in Shercock Garda station. As I recall, there were two trials but there was little evidence to support a conviction. There was another disturbing feature: Witnesses – members of An Garda – heard screams but did nothing. What’s this got to do with the Corrib incident?

Well, there were five Gardaí in the car. There was joking banter on rape and not one voice was raised against. The problem is not that insufficient punishment will be meted out. The problem is that people of this sort are being recruited and then tolerated. There should be no place in An Garda for quiet types who will stay silent when faced with wrongdoing or for people with weird attitudes to crime.

In short, this incident points to the need to review recruitment procedures.

You know, I’ve been listening to analysts all day twisting and turning as they try to find trivial reasons for the result of the Irish presidential election. Perhaps the explanation is quite simply encouraging for those who wish that people voted in support of arguments, ideas, political perspectives, ideologies rather than the gossipy nonsense that journalists go on with.

Look at it this way: By last weekend more people had opted to support Seán Gallagher’s liberal, business approach than Michael D. Higgins’s socialist approach but then during a televised political debate, a value deeper than a political perspective intruded.

Now that I think about it, this is how I, a socialist, decide my candidate preferences and why should someone who might be my polar opposite behave any differently? You see, there are issues which take precedence over voting either left or right. My first test is political murder; its apologists are least preferable of all. My next test is honesty and integrity and candidates who fail this test rate above apologists for murder but no higher. My next test places those too trivial to be considered in a real political choice. Finally, I choose the left candidate over the right wing candidate.

Think about a right-winger who accepts Seán Gallagher’s political argument. That person very likely values honesty and integrity more than the liberal business perspective. Now, he or she sees Seán Gallagher fail this test while polling suggests that the Christian Democrat, Gay Mitchell, has little support and will not figure in the outcome. There really is nothing to do but cross from right to left in order to vote for honesty and integrity.

I tend to have more serious pieces here but in the last couple of days I became involved in a discussion of Facebook and I realised that I had a reasonably serious and developed view on the importance of being able to predict the outcome of choosing to share a home with a dog.

I’m often accused of being a “dog snob” because for many years I’ve had well-bred Flatcoated Retrievers. They suit me, I admire them, they are fun and I like their company but I’m very aware that they could drive someone else to distraction. Now, that’s essentially the point: If you want a dog, you should get one that behaves and looks as you think your dog should. In that regard a pedigree dog is a better bet; it’s to do with knowing what you are getting into and I’ll explain.

ALL breeds are man-made, contrived for some human purpose. Their purpose determines not just their appearance but their temperaments and characters. Once you begin to think that you’d like to have a dog, you can research breeds and it’s very likely that you will find one that appeals in all or enough of these aspects. For example, gundogs are friendly BECAUSE their purpose is to work closely with lots of dogs and humans. Springers, however, appear crazy BECAUSE all that running around is what they’re bred to do in flushing game. They may be impossibly active as pets but a working springer doing what could appear crazy but under control is very effective.

However, most dogs are now kept as pets and if some day your pet reverts to type, there are different outcomes. Your pet Labrador might jump into a bush and retrieve a ball that you didn’t know was there. Your pet pitbull might revert to purpose by attacking another dog or worse! Your mixed breed from the pound is probably ok but you don’t know for certain and you’ve no idea if he/she will be active or quiet, will be destructive or not etc. etc. Pedigree dogs with some horrendous exceptions tend to be quite like their parents. In other words, if you purchase a particular breed, you are relatively certain of getting what you want or at least what you expect. Of course I’m not saying that your puppy will grow up without training to be like his beautifully behaved mammy. What I am saying is that with care, attention and training, he very likely will be.

Now, the alternative view is that rescue dogs are at least as good, are much cheaper, have a high success rate, have a million cute anecdotes to support them, and that rescue is a good in itself. Moreover, this view tends to be linked to an opposition to puppy farming. I don’t disagree with any of this but my point is quite different.

My son’s dog, Amy, is here now. She’s a collie/Labrador cross, she’s fabulous and possibly the best-trained dog I’ve ever seen. I like animals and dogs in particular. It would be great if homes could be found for all of the unwanted and greater still if they turned out like Amy. The difficulty is that breeds are very, very different and getting a dog is a big decision; you live WITH them and you better get it right. Now adopting a mature rescue dog might carry a degree of certainty as you’ve some idea what you’re getting but a pup of uncertain breeding is a gamble that I wouldn’t take.

A familiar line is, “A little bit of love, training and dog socialisation classes will do wonders for a rescue dog.” I wish that were true. However, if the line is changed to read, “… will do wonders for the vast majority of rescue dogs.”, I agree.

Two more points. Firstly, price isn’t an issue. The issue is degree of certainty that on having an animal literally share your home, it works out as you would like.

Secondly, I know that puppy farms exist for popular breeds but it would be very, very wrong to tar breeders generally with that brush. The few whom I know operate very differently: They produce very few pups and always for a particular purpose, and they subscribe to a code operated by their breed association

By the way, I’m certainly not recommending Flatcoats. They are friendly, excellent house dogs, beautiful, athletic, and marvelous as working gundogs but they are very playful, boisterous, confident, intelligent and physical; that’s why they are far less popular as pets than Labradors and Golden Retrievers. If you can endure the full-on American presentation, here’s a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7vARLJkW6c

The real thing, my friend, Stevie, is watching me as I finish this. He’s so much better than the ones in the video and though young (He was two a couple of weeks ago.) he’s already a super working retriever.

Breda O’Brien in The Irish Times of Saturday, February 20, seeks to minimize the blame which should attach to those who did not rise to protect children. She reckons that they are being too strenuously tested, that few of us would pass what she calls the “challenge-the-culture test”. How depressing! She is very wrong to set such low standards.

Excusing inaction on – or even participation in – wrongdoing on the basis of a dishonest understanding of “culture” has become a familiar evasion in Ireland and one that seeks to give a lick of dignity to a life or a career that is in truth unworthy of a citizen – or indeed unworthy of any kind of right thinking person. It is shameful and slavish to claim that as long as misconduct is so common as to attract the term “culture”, one can avoid blame for letting it happen. It is alarming that so many people seem to think that the holder of a post is not required to take some sort of stand against wrongdoing or stupidity.

It is certain that many of our scandals rest on past acceptance of this contemptible nonsense. Now it needs to be up-rooted to ensure the appointment of people of better character.

Very few of us will get through life without being asked at times to make some kind of stand and it could be argued that such tests are necessary to a full life. In extreme cases the risks will be too great. Standing up might result in death, imprisonment, exile or loss of a job. Faced with such risks, no one could be blamed for keeping quiet and surviving. However, when the risks are merely to one’s popularity, one’s quiet life or one’s chances of promotion, failure to take a stand should be condemned.

It is certain that in the case of extensive child abuse removing the “culture” fig leaf should cause many to fall from respectability. The excuse is, however, more widely used. For example, employment in the banking industry during the damaging years asked questions about courage and integrity. Now only those who spoke out should remain in anything but junior positions.

In short, whining about “the culture of the time” or “the culture of the industry” etc. is not an excuse for complicity.

It may be that we need an inquiry into the conduct of Irish banking and its regulation. However, the complexity of banking operations should not obscure the obvious. It was clear to any person with average intelligence and a passing interest in current affairs that the property bubble would end in tears. It most certainly is not true that everyone was deceived or mistaken.

Let’s be blunt: Anyone who failed to recognise the problem is not a person to be taken seriously in future. Anyone who did recognize the problem but remained silent has questions to answer. Sensible people in the banking and finance industry must have felt intimidated by the tide of nonsense in support of the clearly unsustainable; they must have had to weigh good conduct against career prospects.

Here we have an industry in need of changes in personnel. The one fortunate outcome is that people have been tested. Some have proved themselves but it is clear that those who did not speak out clearly and strongly lack the ability, integrity or courage required to manage at any level.

There are at least two failings among socialists. Firstly, the term, “working class”, has been allowed to become meaningless or a synonym for very poor. To be working class was to claim status and pride, e.g. until relatively recently “a working class illiterate” would have been considered an oxymoron.

Secondly, socialists – in defence of the poor and oppressed – have been drawn to an uncharacteristically liberal view on equality. The high ground of positive liberty has tended to be abandoned in favour of a negative liberty – or even extreme relativism – that tries to cherish everything. It needs to be emphasised that there is not the slightest contradiction between wanting to liberate people from poverty – economic and, yes, cultural – and taking care not to blame them for being poor.